Thursday, May 30, 2013

JOAN OF ARC, SAINT OF ANTINOUS

ON MAY 30th the Religion of Antinous honors Saint Joan of Arc who was burned as a heretic on this day in 1431.

She was a peasant girl who led the armies of the King of France
against the occupying forces of the English. She claimed to have been
chosen by God to drive the English from France and deliver the country
to her King.

Joan of Arc said that she conversed daily with Saints Catherine and
Margaret and St. Michael the Archangel. Her greatest victory was the
liberation of Orleans, where Charles, then Dauphin, was crowned as King
of France.

She was later captured by the English and subsequently tried by the
Church and burned as a heretic. The focus of her trial was upon the
nature of her visions, which the inquisitors condemned as Demonic, and
upon her refusal to wear women's clothing.

Joan of Arc was in essence the most courageous of all transvestites,
whose insistence upon male dress and hair style, and occupation as a
warrior was the excuse used by the Church for her condemnation and
subsequent burning as a heretic. The Church however reversed this
decision in 1909 by beatifying her, and then finally consecrating her as
a saint in 1920.

Though she is a saint of the Catholic Church and a devoted Christian,
it is for her courage as a transvestite and possibly as a sacred
lesbian that she is included as a Heroic Martyr Saint of the Religion of Antinous.